Preserving Practices #4: Automated Archiving

AI promises to save us time by taking care of the tasks we keep postponing, and archiving is usually the first to sink to the bottom of the to-do list. So, one plus one equals two, right? But what actually happens when we let AI step into our archives? Does it help us remember better, fill in the gaps, and make our collections more complete? Or are our archives quietly becoming training data, teaching AI how to see, sort, and decide for us?

Automated Archiving is the fourth and last session of How to Archive Better: Preserving Practices, a four part workshop series on digital archiving that gives creators and makers the tools they need to archive their own practice.

In this fourth session, we dive into how AI can support knowledge archiving, unpack how these systems work, and examine their pitfalls. Through these conversations we want to raise questions about when AI is actually helpful and what we should be careful of.

We have a packed program. The afternoon starts with a presentation by artist Linda Dounia Rebeiz. Together with her studio partner Delali Vorgbe they have been working on a model that acts as an indigenous knowledge system repository and living archive of the Serer cosmology (the worldview of the Serer people of Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania). Linda and Delali will share insights into the craft of building archives for model training.

Early internet artist Martine Neddam will briefly explain how the archive of her iconic artwork Mouchette (created in 1996) formed the basis for a new project in which you can chat with Mouchette. We’ll get a sneak peek into the project, which is still a work in progress

And we finish the day with a working session led by artist and designer Leo Scarin, who teaches us the practice of scraping. You’ll learn how to extract data from online archives or your own website. What does this reveal about how machine learning models are made, and which tactics can be used to keep your work from being crawled by large-scale models?

📅 Date: Thursday 12 February 2026
🕗 Time: 15.00 – 17.30 CET
📍 Location: The Hmm Studio, NDSM plein 125 1033 WC Amsterdam and online
🎟 Tickets: €5 per workshop (onsite or online)

As these workshops are more intimate sessions, there is a limited supply of tickets available. The workshops can be joined both onsite and online. You can find information about physical accessibility at The Hmm’s studio here.

Note for passepartout ticketholders:

With a passepartout ticket, you can join all four sessions onsite or online. We ask that you email us at info@thehmm.nl in advance to let us know which workshops you would like to attend, and your mode of presence.

How to Archive Better: Preserving Practices

Artists, designers, and makers often struggle with processes of archiving their own work. This is especially true for individuals or collectives who work digitally or who have more intersectional and social practices. Archiving your own work can often feel like a lonely task, and one that gets left behind, forgotten, moved to the end of the to-do list. How to Archive Better: Preserving Practices is a four part workshop series on digital archiving that gives creators and makers the tools they need to archive their own practice. The workshop series made in collaboration between The Hmm and Network Archives Design and Digital Culture (NADD), a growing network of museums, creators, archives, designers, researchers and collectives who have combined forces to make design and digital culture archives visible, accessible and future-proof.

This four-part series encourages us to move from individual practices to collective archiving—practicing ways to support one another acts of archiving. With this in mind, the sessions will include knowledge sharing combined with a practical collective working session. Each workshop will begin with a talk from an artist, designer, or researcher, sharing their own archiving practice and experience as inspiration, followed by a more hands-on workshop where an invited guest (researcher, artist, archivist) teaches a specific set of skills or approach to archiving. Following the workshop, time will be dedicated to work on archiving your own practice as an extension of the tools or ideas shared in the session.

The sessions will be hybrid and participants can join onsite or online. The onsite sessions will take place either in Amsterdam at The Hmm’s studio in the NDSM Loods or Rotterdam at Nieuwe Instituut. Please check the session you would like to join for the specific onsite location.